In a week darkened by the Navy Yard shooting, there were reminders of just how good people can be. Five highlights:

--Dairy Queen manager's class act wins praise: A teenage Dairy Queen manager in Hopkins, Minnesota, qualifies as the new poster boy for basic human decency. Joey Prusak, 19, was serving a blind customer when the man dropped a $20 bill without knowing it. What happened next was cruel ... and then incredibly kind.

--Homeless man who returned $42K gets big payoff: Whoever said no good deed goes unpunished probably never got six figures out of the act. But turning in a lost backpack with $42,000 in cash and traveler's checks inside has paid off for Glen James, all thanks to a stranger touched by the Good Samaritan and homeless Bostonian.

--Woman gets 70-year-old letter from dad she never met: Peggy Smith never met her father, who was about to deploy to Europe during World War II when she was born and died four months later. Nearly seven decades after his death, she's received a letter he wrote to her that only surfaced 14 years ago ... and took that long to get to her.

--Pen pals meet after 55 Years of letters: More wild letter news: Linda Martin and Wendy Norrie have been writing to each other for 55 years, ever since Norrie's fourth-grade teacher started a pen pal project in 1958. On Monday, they met for the first time.

--Woman rescued after 2 weeks in well: After more than 2 weeks trapped in an abandoned well, many people would give up hope. But China's Su Qixiu kept calling for help and managed to survive. Here's how.

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